


Service to the Ninth

by zoicite



Category: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: F/F, Fighting and Kissing, Is this M or E?, Pre-Canon, goblin harrow and her whipping girl, kissing and fighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-28 23:42:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21400585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoicite/pseuds/zoicite
Summary: The thing Gideon didn’t understand was, if Harrow just said, “Hey, Griddle, we’re both alone here and our hormones are raging, you want to get a little kissy with each other?,” Gideon would have absolutely said yes!Okay, first she would have said, “Hell No. Choke on a bone, Nonagesimus”, but that was mostly just a reflex. And once Gideon was alone and actually thought about it, she would have reconsidered, and eventually she would have decided that even if it was some atrociously cruel trick that Harrow planned, some attempt to humiliate or hurt Gideon, it was still worth finding out because kissing -- actuallykissing! -- and it wasn’t like there was anyone else offering or anyone else Gideon could even consider asking.So if Harrow asked again, Gideon would have said, “Yes.  This is the worst idea you’ve ever had in a long history of bad ideas, but let’s do it! I’m in!”  Why bother with the skeletons, with the fighting, now that Harrow knew that Gideon was into her advances?
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 35
Kudos: 329





	Service to the Ninth

There were twelve this time. They were incompetent and brittle and grasping. It was easy for Gideon, almost fun, and she wondered for a moment why Harrow had started underestimating her.

It didn’t matter though, not really. It didn’t matter how many skeletons there were. What mattered, in the grand scheme of things that mattered between Harrowhark Nonagesimus and Gideon Nav, was that Gideon had come at all. She’d taken Harrow’s bait with pathetically little hesitation. She’d followed Harrow’s clumsy skeleton to this unused cave, far from the center of Drearburh, outside the realm of Crux’s usual rounds, out on the edge where the atmosphere was pumped thin, where everything was strained. Gideon wasn’t surprised to find Harrow there waiting, hands out and flanked by bodies of bone. She’d known where this was headed as soon as she saw the skeleton leaning against the wall outside of her room. The skeleton gestured with its hand, a disturbing little ‘come hither’ motion, and that was all it took. Gideon looked up and down the corridor to see what loathsome Niners might be watching, saw no one, and followed Harrow’s construct.

If Gideon ignored Harrow, Harrow would probably give up, maybe Harrow would even decide to leave her blessedly alone.

Ha ha ha. Funny. 

Anyway, Gideon didn’t want to ignore it. She actually thought she needed it, this reminder of what they’d become, a reminder of what she was trying to escape.

Twelve skeletons. Stupid and careless, all black pits and red dots for eyes and sharp bony limbs. As Harrow stood back and pulled their strings, they came at Gideon and Gideon raised her sword. She was ready.

Her blade hit the first two skeletons with a satisfying crunch as bone broke and shattered. Gideon spun and hit another, throwing its head clear across the cave. The rest of the skeletons reached her then, grabbing and pulling at her arms, knocking against her knees, trying to get her down on the ground. 

Not happening. Gideon kicked out fragile kneecaps, elbowed constructs in the ribs, and then managed to take down four skeletons in one satisfying blow. 

Harrow glanced down at an ugly old watch on her wrist, eyebrows raised, as the twelfth skeleton crumbled into dust at Gideon’s feet. Harrow’s nose was bleeding a little, but she stood, largely unphased, barely breathing heavy. She didn’t even break a sweat. 

“Oh, I’m boring you, am I?” Gideon accused, her breath coming out in heavy gasps around the words. After all, twelve skeletons were still twelve skeletons. Easy was relative. Anyway, there was never enough air out this far from Drearburh.

“Not at all,” Harrow returned, looking up to study Gideon’s sweaty and heaving form. She stepped forward, her eyes somehow bright in their darkness, and Gideon tightened her grip on her sword. “I just didn’t expect this to take all day.”

What a bitch. What a -- All day! Gideon dropped those skeletons in twenty minutes tops!

Harrow wiped the blood from her nose onto her sleeve. She was barely bleeding now and her hands weren’t out, but even so, Harrow was the most dangerous person Gideon had ever met. She had to remember that. 

Not that Harrow had much competition on the Ninth.

“You deserve better friends,” Aiglamene had said to her once, maybe the kindest thing that Aiglamene had ever said. It was probably true, but Gideon didn’t have better friends. She didn’t have _any_ friends if you got down to it. She had this… this mess with Harrowhark. She had her memories of when they were young and this was actually fun, they actually sometimes even laughed together and meant it before it all turned sour and black. Now they hated and they seethed and she used her rivalry with Harrow to force herself into top form -- she had to if she was going to get off this rotten rock one day. To finally start to live. And yeah, maybe even find a friend if she was really really very fucking lucky.

Harrow was coming toward her, and when Harrow got close enough, Gideon didn’t hesitate. She started swinging right away, just a warning. Gideon was stupid, but she wasn’t stupid enough to touch Harrow with sword or fist. A kick or a shove once in a while -- okay, that was fair game. Anyway, the sword swinging was what Harrow wanted, what she anticipated, and she sprouted femurs from bone chips she’d hidden in the palms of her hands, used them like batons, blocked Gideon’s first blows. This was new -- it surprised Gideon and she stumbled back, not used to her sword coming in such close contact with the Reverend Daughter. 

“Did that hurt?” she asked, before she could stop herself from caring. Harrow’s arms were like limp leek noodles. She was in no condition to block even Gideon’s most half-hearted of blows.

Harrow didn’t answer, just continued to advance on Gideon. Gideon for her part, stepped back --

\-- and right into the arms of four waiting skeletons, who pulled and grabbed, grappled her to the ground as their lower halves crumbled into the dirt.

Her head hit the hard packed dirt of the cave floor and before the flash of pain had subsided, before she could take stock of this new situation, Harrow was on her, over her, a black bat of a girl, charcoal winged arms holding her down (with the help of eight additional bony hands). This was such a surprise for Gideon that she completely forgot to fight Harrow for a moment, just lay there, stunned. 

Harrow didn’t say anything, stared down at Gideon, face bright and triumphant even beneath a thick layer of skull paint.

“What the hell are you doing?” Gideon demanded, and that knocked some sense back into her body, which began trying to twist away from Harrow. “Let go of me you sadistic bone freak!”

A skeletal hand pressed down on Gideon’s forehead. 

“Shh,” Harrow said. She leaned in close by Gideon’s ear. “Shh.” 

What the fuck. “What the _fuck_, Harrow.”

“Shh,” Harrow said again. Like Gideon might just stop fighting, might just let Harrow kill her once and for all. And then some bony fingers touched Gideon’s cheek and it felt like a caress, like -- honestly, Gideon had no idea how a caress felt, but a skeleton was touching Gideon with no clear intent of punching her and -- Fuck, this was too weird, even for a psycho like Nonagesimus. 

Gideon’s heart was racing. Harrow must feel it, she was so close, her hands pressed down on Gideon’s arms, fingers pushing sharp into Gideon’s biceps. 

And then Harrow kissed her.

Gideon’s head was still pounding from the impact, still shocked from having a skeleton feeling up her face, and she lay there stunned for a moment when Harrow’s mouth came in to cover hers. Harrow’s hands stopped poking Gideon’s arms and fisted in Gideon’s robe, pushing her into the ground so that Gideon couldn’t escape, but Harrow’s mouth felt -- not gentle, but not violent either. Insistent? It felt like Harrow actually wanted this, wasn’t just doing it to fuck with Gideon, to find ways to stab her in the heart that didn’t involve actual swords.

Gideon felt some of the fight slip out of her. She tried to reach up and the skeletal hands fell away, letting her arms move. She gripped at Harrow’s cloak and found herself unsure if she meant to push Harrow away or pull her closer.

She pulled her closer. She kissed Harrow back. It was her first kiss that didn’t include the back of her hand, her pillow, and an insane amount of wishful thinking. This wasn’t at all how she thought it would happen -- and somehow exactly how she _knew_ it would happen at the same time. This was all they ever had, her and Harrow, stuck here on a planet of dead, might as well be dead, and one relatively young yet so dull they’d probably prefer to be dead (Ugh, Ortus. What a drip).

Maybe this really was inevitable and they were always going to end up like this, covered in bone and messily kissing each other in the dirt. 

What the fuck.

And also, was kissing supposed to be this _wet_? Harrow was sucking at Gideon’s lips, trying to work Gideon’s mouth open, her head tilting to get at Gideon from a better angle. Eventually Gideon gave in and relaxed her jaw a bit, and then Harrow’s tongue was there, brushing against hers just once, sending sparks flashing across Gideon’s brain.

Harrow must not have felt those sparks, because that was it -- the end of the kiss. Harrow stood abruptly, skeletal hands tightening on Gideon to keep her from following.

She looked down her nose at Gideon, her eyes hard, and then she walked off. By the time Gideon struggled to her feet and picked up her sword, Harrowhark Nonagesimus was nowhere to be found.

“What the fuck,” Gideon said again, this time to the empty cave. Her voice echoed off the walls, swearing back at her. 

**

Gideon avoided the hell out of Harrow after that. No way was she running into the Reverend Daughter in some corridor surrounded by a gaggle of judgy nuns. Harrow would say something nasty, something just incredibly mean, and all Gideon would be able to think was _Okay, how long have you been thinking about getting into these pants though?_.

It was a full week before another skeleton showed up outside Gideon’s door. 

“Fuck no,” Gideon said, sure by then that whatever Harrow was doing could not possibly be good for Gideon. She flipped the thing off and went about her day as though she’d never seen it.

When she returned to her cell that evening there were two skeletons there and one of them reached out and tried to take her hand.

That was too freaky and Gideon smashed it hard into the wall of the corridor. It fell into a pile. The other skeleton didn’t try anything funny, didn’t reach for Gideon at all, so she left it alone and went to bed.

In the morning there were three. None of them tried to touch her, but when Gideon left, they flanked her; one on each side and the third following behind. Gideon rolled her eyes and changed her plans.

She walked a long circuitous loop, down to the catacombs, then back up to her tier. She stopped at her cell again and picked up her sword. She also took the time to brush her teeth, because hey, she had no idea what was going on in Harrowhark’s demented brain, and it wouldn’t hurt Gideon to be prepared just in case.

“All right, boys,” Gideon said, though she honestly couldn’t tell the difference between a boy skeleton and a girl skeleton and also really didn’t care. “Let’s go.”

Harrow was waiting, suspiciously alone.

Gideon paused, surveyed the cave. There was no one else there, just Harrow and Gideon, and Gideon’s three escorts. 

“What? Just these three?” Gideon asked, offended. 

Harrow just glared at her, eyes hard within the painted black sockets. Gideon thought maybe she jumped the gun with the whole mouth preparation. Harrow didn’t look like she was planning to kiss Gideon again anytime soon. Harrow looked pretty pissed off, actually. What the hell did Gideon do to deserve this glare? She just -- Oh.

“Okay, so this is about yesterday,” Gideon concluded.

“You are beholden to the Ninth, Nav,” Harrow said, her voice low. “You come when I call.”

Gideon couldn’t help it. She laughed and then stopped when Harrow narrowed her eyes, her mouth pinching tight. 

“Oookay. Did you wait here all night?”

Harrow wasn’t in a talking mood. She just continued to scowl at Gideon from across the field.

“You did! I thought you’d feel it as soon as I destroyed your skeleton friend. That’s not how that works?”

“I didn’t wait here all night,” Harrow said with impressive restraint. She pressed fingers to the bones of her left wrist as though counting them.

“So just most of the night.”

That earned her a punch to the side of the head from the skeleton standing behind her.

“God, you’re a dick,” Gideon concluded. It wasn’t a hard punch, but still. It fucking hurt. 

As soon as the pain subsided, just a tad, Gideon spun and shattered the skeleton with her blade. The other two tried to come at her then too, but Gideon took care of them easily.

Harrow watched, quietly. She watched, but she didn’t send in the cavalry. No hands poking from the dirt, no bone fragments pulled from her pockets. There had to be something else -- Gideon must be missing something, but what?

“That’s really it?” Gideon asked.

Harrow smiled, slow and mean, and a drop of blood dripped from her left ear.

Fuck, okay. What was she missing?

Gideon looked up at the ceiling of the cave and the big hole of midnight blue Ninth sky. No. Nothing there.

When she looked back down, Harrow’s hands were beckoning her forward, fingers curling in toward her palms, but her thumbs stayed suspiciously pinched in the fleshy center. All right. So it was the femur swords again. Harrow was going to get herself hurt trying to battle Gideon with a couple bones in her hands, and if Harrow ended up hurt, Gideon was going to pay an unpleasant price cooked up by Harrow’s aunts with a far too generous amount of input from Crux. Still, if that’s how Harrow wanted it, who was Gideon to deny her? After all, Gideon Nav was _beholden_ to the Ninth. She came when Harrow called and Harrow was calling her now.

She shouted as she rushed at Harrow, entirely expecting Harrow to sprout some bones and pretend she knew how to use a sword. Instead Harrow just stood there. Gideon was so startled by this inaction that she forgot to stop her charge and smacked right into Harrow. Her shoulder connected with Harrow’s chest and knocked them both to the ground. 

Harrow shouted out “Griddle!” in fury as she fell.

Gideon dropped her sword and Harrow tried to kick it away, the sound of it sliding across the cave floor loud over their grunts. The sword was heavy and didn’t move much. Harrow followed up that failed attempt by kicking at Gideon and Gideon scrambled back, grabbed her sword and got to her feet. Harrow was on her feet again too, breathing heavy, her hands spread wide and straining. 

Fuck, okay. Gideon heard bones clinking together behind her and she turned to find something spawned from her own nightmares. Harrow had created a skeleton, sure, but it was a horror show of a skeleton with four sets of legs and two sets of arms and no head whatsoever and it looked like some spider demon crawled up from the depths of Drearburh. Gideon wasn’t proud of it, but she screamed and thought very hard about running out of there.

The construct began to skitter toward Gideon, and Gideon hacked at it wildly, desperately. She couldn’t believe she’d brushed her teeth for this!

In the end, it turned out an eight legged, four armed, headless creeper beast, wasn’t actually designed with fighting in mind. It couldn’t move all that well, had no weapons, and well -- no head. Gideon took it down easily, but she screamed the entire time, and when it was a pile of dust and bone, she let her arms go limp, let the tip of her sword rest against the ground.

Harrow was watching her with wide eyes and streaks of blood coming out of her ears and nose.

“That was new,” Gideon noted, surprised by how calm she managed to sound, as long as one ignored the heaving and the coughing.

“Did you like it?” Harrow asked, her voice thick with blood. She was turning the pile of bones back into four normal skeletons. 

“Absolutely no, thank you!”

The skeletons reached out to grab Gideon’s arms, and you know what? Fuck it, Gideon let them. She let them push her until she was backed up against the wall. 

Harrow pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed at the blood on her face. Eventually, she was satisfied and pushed the cloth back into her cloak. Gideon didn’t bother to tell her that she’d missed a few spots. She just stood there against the wall and let her arms be held. She had suspicions about what Harrow might be planning next. 

Harrow moved in, eyes dark and fixed on Gideon’s mouth. 

Gideon was so fucking glad she brushed her teeth.

**

The next time a skeleton showed up at Gideon’s cell, Gideon dropped everything except her sword and followed it eagerly. 

Her brain kept sending her alarms that shouted ‘GO BACK!’ and ‘HALT AND THINK!’ and ‘IMMINENT PERIL!’ and the rest of Gideon’s body completely ignored it, instead screamed things like ‘SWORDS!’ and ‘KISSING A GIRL!!’ and ‘MEAN LADY KINDA SEXY IN A CREEPY WAY!’ and, finally, ‘IMMINENT TITTIES!!’ (which was complete nonsense, because Harrowhark didn’t have any). The noise coming from the rest of her body was of a much better quality than the noise from her brain, and so Gideon just… turned that off. 

Okay, so she was weak. She was so pathetically weak. And later she was going to lie on her floor and curse her pathetic weakness for hours, maybe even bang her head forlornly against a wall for a bit. 

She _hated_ Harrow. She hated Harrow with every fiber of her being, hated Harrow with all the fury that she reserved for the whole of the Ninth, hated Harrow consistently for years slapped down on top of years. She spent her life planning intricate attempts designed to get off this shit planet and never see any of these people again, and Crux might be at the very top of that ‘never see again’ list, but Harrowhark Nonagesimus was a very close second. She had fractures with Harrow’s name on them, scars that screamed Harrow’s name, bruises that faded but still whispered Harrow’s name underneath her skin. 

And yet! Gideon’s heart sped up at every skeleton that passed her cell and her stomach did a little flip and she rushed to grab her sword. She was ready! Desecrate me, Empress of the Oss!

Once she followed a skeleton that she thought was Harrow’s and it led her to old Sister Clavicala, who screamed when she saw Gideon there, Gideon’s face flushed and her sword drawn. Gideon had to spend an entire afternoon lugging bones up from the catacombs, endured a straight hour of Crux shouting bullshit and obscenities right into Gideon’s ear while Harrowhark stood back and watched with a wicked little smirk twisting her painted mouth.

Gideon turned her brain back on after that, but only a little, because later that day Gideon still returned to her cell with paint from Harrow’s wicked little mouth smeared all over the lower half of her face.

It was always the same too, some weird and awkward banter and then Gideon fought off a bunch of skeletons, fifteen, twenty, more and more each time. Sometimes Harrow threw those creepy bone jumbles into the mix, but those were harder for her to keep together, easier for Gideon to bring down, so usually it was just regular bone people, and lots of them. 

Once the skeletons were dispatched, it was time for the kissing, and boy howdy, was there a lot of kissing happening!

And it was all fine. It was weird and pathetic and a little creepy, but it was also exciting and sexy as hell, and though Gideon had never been good at mathematics, she figured weird, pathetic, creepy, exciting, and sexy averaged together put you somewhere in the vicinity of _fine_.

Totally fine, except that Gideon’s brain kept trying to switch back on a little bit at a time, and after a while, Gideon got it into her stupid head that maybe it was time to ask Harrow about what they were doing and why.

“I don’t get it,” Gideon said, trying to catch her breath. Harrow was already on her, pushing her upright, hands twisted eager and desperate in the folds of Gideon’s clothes. 

“Stop trying to think then,” Harrow advised, barely paying attention to what Gideon was starting to say anyway. She was entirely focused on Gideon’s chest, on her arms, and on getting her mouth on Gideon’s lips. “You’ll only hurt yourself.”

Oh look, a clear signal for Gideon to turn her brain back on right the fuck now. It felt uncomfortably like Harrow had read Gideon’s mind and agreed with her body in choosing to ignore it. It was obvious evidence that the shouting Gideon’s brain was doing was important, but Harrow kissed Gideon, and the fit of her mouth to Gideon’s was kinda familiar now but somehow still new and thrilling and completely irresistible. Gideon’s brain wasn’t nearly this fun.

It also wouldn’t shut up, so Gideon pulled her head back and eyed Harrow’s paint-smeared pointy little face.

“Is it the fighting?” Gideon asked. “You can’t help yourself around a woman with a sword?” 

That was understandable and seemed to Gideon the only explanation for Harrow’s desperate hands clutching at her and Harrow’s desperate mouth pulling kisses from Gideon’s lips like they were air or food or water, something Harrow needed to survive.

The thing Gideon didn’t understand was, if Harrow just said, “Hey, Griddle, we’re both alone here and our hormones are raging, you want to get a little kissy with each other?,” Gideon would have absolutely said yes! 

Okay, first she would have said, “Hell No. Choke on a bone, Nonagesimus”, but that was mostly just a reflex. And once Gideon was alone and actually thought about it, she would have reconsidered, and eventually she would have decided that even if it was some atrociously cruel trick that Harrow planned, some attempt to humiliate or hurt Gideon, it was still worth finding out because kissing -- actually _kissing_! -- and it wasn’t like there was anyone else offering or anyone else Gideon could even consider asking. 

So if Harrow asked again, Gideon would have said, “Yes. This is the worst idea you’ve ever had in a long history of bad ideas, but let’s do it! I’m in!” And if Harrow was dead set on no one finding out, Gideon would have met her out there in their cave on the edge for a secret sexy rendezvous. So Gideon didn’t really get the rest of this. Why bother with the skeletons, with the fighting, now that Harrow knew that Gideon was into her advances?

“It isn’t about you at all,” Harrow snapped, and then immediately resumed kissing Gideon in a way that felt to Gideon like it was _very much_ about her.

Gideon fell back into the kiss, but her stupid brain would not shut up. She let it in and now it refused to let her enjoy the moment, kept pulling at her with annoying naggy questions! 

Gideon leaned back away from Harrow’s kiss again and Harrow sighed in frustration.

“_How_? How is it not about me?” Gideon pointed to herself. “You know that I’m the person you’ve been kissing, right? Me? Big beautiful sword, amazing arms, red hair?”

“It just isn’t,” Harrow insisted. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“It is though,” Gideon pressed. “Are you having secret ‘fight and kiss’ time with Ortus too?”

“Don’t be disgusting.”

“But like -- one day you and Ortus are doomed to be married, to be dreadfully wed, so -- “

Gideon saw the steam start to spew out from Harrow’s ears immediately and knew that that was officially the end of kissing for the day. 

It was one of those running jokes they had as kids, Gideon insisting that one day Harrow _must_ marry Ortus Nigenad, cause honestly, who else was there? Who else was going to create the next generation of necromantic nightmare child?

“I’d rather die!” tiny Harrow would announce. “I’d rather walk out onto the surface and suffocate! I’d rather be ripped apart by skeletons and thrown down in the catacombs! I’d rather marry Mortus the Ninth!” -- Especially gross, because not only was he a nasty boy person, he was also wicked old, definitely in the old man category. She’d rather marry Ortus’s _dad_. That was really saying something. 

And once tiny Harrow even slipped and said, “I’d rather marry you!” And wow, small Gideon got a lot of mileage out of that one, really beat that proverbial dead horse. 

The good old days. Back before everything turned into even worse shit.

There was no “I’d rather marry you!” from Harrow now. 

Instead she got “Say that again and I’ll have skeletons pull out your toenails while you sleep!” The level of shrill in Harrow’s voice was an impressive achievement. “Say that again and I’ll throw you into the Locked Tomb and watch your flesh melt off your bones. Say it again and we’re never ever doing _this_ again.”

Okay, so that last part seemed like an actual threat.

“Fine,” Gideon said. “It’s not about you for me either.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Harrow agreed, head cocked to one side as she considered Gideon. “You’ve been filling your head with pornographic filth for years. You’d jump at anyone who gave you the chance to try out even a fraction of the things you’ve read.”

“Not anyone,” Gideon snapped, too harsh and too quickly, because Harrow was almost entirely right. Gideon regretted every decision she’d ever made that brought her to this moment in this conversation.

“Fine, any girl,” Harrow clarified. “That narrows down the pool quite a lot around here, doesn’t it?”

“So we’re doing this because you’re curious about all the filthy things I know?”

“That isn’t what I said.”

“It kind of is!”

“My reasons are my reasons,” Harrow said. “You are not important, Griddle. You’ve never been important. I spend hardly any time thinking about you at all.”

Gideon snorted. Sure, Harrow.

“You’re a means to an end, that’s it.”

“All right,” Gideon said. She took a step back and swiped her hands together as thought brushing dirt from her palms. “So I’ll meet you here tomorrow to continue the kissing?” 

Harrow didn’t say anything, but she did clench her fists and shove Gideon aside before she stalked off in a billow of black cloth.

“I guess that’s a yes!” Gideon shouted after her.

**

It was. 

Harrow’s skeleton was there waiting for Gideon the very next afternoon. 

**

Gideon started spending an extraordinary time working out in her room and thinking about what exactly might be the end to which she was providing Harrow the means. And that just confirmed that Harrow was right about Gideon, because Gideon actually had a lot of ideas of ends that they might achieve together, and most of them were pulled directly from her more salacious publications. This entire line of thinking meant that by working out alone in her room, Gideon ended up actually working out and then… _working out_. 

She was also deeply ashamed. Until now she had proudly and expertly managed to avoid thinking about any of the real people of the Ninth while... _working out_. She’d managed to completely divorce her fantasies from the reality of living in this dreary ancient nun-ridden hellscape. 

That blissful chapter of her life was over now, completely ruined by dark desperate eyes, by the taste of paint and the smell of blood and bone, by small thorny hands pulling at church robes.

Gideon tried to focus on a set of sit-ups, on the training regimen that had gotten her through so many difficult and painful situations in the past. It wasn’t working now. Even crunching herself up in a hundred sit-ups felt erotic now that her head was full of fighting and Harrow’s mouth.  
Gideon fell back onto her bed and sighed. The sigh shook with the twitching of her torso. Not helping.

Oh, get up, you pervert. Get up and do push-ups instead. The clapping kind. Those require too much concentration to get weird and sexy about them.

Gideon, once again, ignored her brain’s very sensible advice. Instead she leaned over the edge of her bed and began fumbling through the magazines she kept in haphazard stacks underneath.

Gideon had exactly one magazine that was centered on the Ninth House, one magazine where everyone in it wore paint on their faces and bones around their necks, and absolutely nothing else. Gideon hated it. _The Necromantic Ninth’s Most Buxom Black Vestals_ \-- a name worthy of an eye roll all on its own -- was good for one thing and one thing only. 

That one thing was instantly killing a mood dead on arrival. 

Now though -- now she dug the magazine out from beneath her bed, blew off the dust, and flipped through until she found the woman with the pointiest, meanest, Harrow-shaped face. The woman also happened to have huge tits and perfectly thick thighs, which was absolutely not in character, but it’d have to do. 

Was she really going to do this again? 

It was bad enough the first time she stumbled into her cell direct from kissing Harrow, fell to her knees, fingers frantically pushing herself to release. And then the second time, and the third, but this -- somehow what she was doing now was different. She hadn’t just returned from an extended kissing session, she’d pushed herself to this point all on her own, just thinking about Harrow’s stupid face and her stupid grippy pincher fingers, no actual kissing required, just a bad likeness of Harrow on a glossy page -- and truthfully she didn’t even need that.

She tossed the magazine to the floor. And then she unbuttoned her trousers and slid her hand inside.

Yep, she was going to do this. And then she was going to hate herself _so hard_ for at least a week.

Gideon closed her eyes, settled into her bed — and almost missed the sound of something clicking against the floor.

Her eyes snapped open and she looked toward the sound. A small bone was on the floor beside the door and as Gideon watched, it began to shake. Gideon stared, horrified, with her hand pushed into her trousers, body and fingers ready. 

“No!” she barked and scrambled to stand. Her foot slipped on the glossy pages of the magazine and she slid to the floor, her hand flying in an attempt to knock down the skeleton sprouting to life from one tiny bone. 

Gideon pushed herself back to her feet, her trousers sliding down her hips and making it difficult to move. She grabbed at them with one hand, pushed the skeleton aside with the other, and rushed to the keyhole. She pressed her eye to it -- and only later did she contemplate the fact that Harrow might have tried to push another bone through, effectively blinding Gideon in the process -- and tried to peer out into the hall without actually opening the door. 

She couldn’t see shit.

“Harrow!” Gideon spit the name like a curse.

The skeleton was trying to shove past Gideon so that it could open the door. Gideon turned and knocked it away. She grabbed her sword and swung, hitting the skeleton hard in the chest. Its ribs shattered and its spine folded over and fell. The legs still danced around a bit. They seemed confused and another day that might be comical, but Gideon had both hands on her sword, which meant her trousers were just barely hanging on. Gideon kicked the bone legs and they collapsed to the floor.

She pulled up her trousers and buttoned them. She kicked her dirty magazine back under her bed, ran a hand through her hair, cleared her throat, and very calmly opened the door.

No one there. The corridor was empty except for two skeletons lugging bags of dusty black laundry. They obviously weren’t Harrow’s constructs and Gideon ignored them as they passed.

Right, so the skeleton through the keyhole was an act of entitled impatience from the Lady of the Ninth, unable to wait until Gideon decided to leave her cell to encounter the summons. That seemed about right and Gideon was surprised Harrow hadn’t used the method before. Though on second thought, it did require Harrow to linger around outside Gideon’s room with a chance of getting caught by someone who might get thoughts into their head about Harrow and Gideon becoming _friends_ or something equally unsavory. Harrow must have been pretty desperate to get Gideon to their cave.

Gideon, therefore, took her sweet time. She swept all of the bones into the corridor, checked behind the furniture and underneath the bed to make sure she didn’t miss a single fragment. This took a while because she had to pull out piles of magazines and comics, shake them to make sure nothing was hiding in their pages, and then stack them back again. When that was finally done, she grabbed her sword and a femur from the pile of bone in the corridor and she headed toward their battlefield at a casual stroll.

Harrow was pacing and pinched by the time Gideon arrived.

“Where’s the construct?” Harrow asked.

Gideon threw the femur at Harrow’s feet.

“Don’t shove bones into my cell,” Gideon said. 

Harrow didn’t have anything to say to that, but the good news was that she still just looked mad and mean; she didn’t look like she’d witnessed anything untoward in Gideon’s cell. Harrow wouldn’t have been able to keep that off her face and she probably would have looked a little less sour.

Gideon shifted, her mind back on the moment she heard the click of that tiny bone, uncomfortable and a little embarrassed regardless of whatever Harrow did or didn’t see.

“Okay,” she said, shifting her grip on her sword, ready. “Let’s get on with this.”

“You already destroyed my construct,” Harrow said, her voice tight, strained. “Lie down.”

“What?” She heard Harrow, but this wasn’t the usual protocol. 

“Lie down and close your eyes.”

“I hit one skeleton. Lie down for what? What are you going to do?”

Harrow examined her fingers, picked at a bit of skin on her knuckle. “Stop asking stupid questions and just do it.”

“I’m not going to lie down and close my eyes so you can surprise me by having your skeleton army stomp all over my body.”

“I’m not planning to stomp on your body.”

“Oh, no? Swear on the Tomb.”

“Griddle.” Harrow sounded disappointed in Gideon, but like -- what had Harrow ever done to earn even an ounce of Gideon’s trust? She hadn’t actually killed her yet, but that was about it!

“Swear and I’ll lie down and close my eyes.”

“I swear I’m not planning to stomp your body with skeletons. Now lie down and shut up. And give me your sword.”

“Ha! Fuck you!”

“Temporarily. I’ll give it back.”

“No way,” Gideon said. “Sword stays with me.”

“Fine, just lie down. I’d rather not be out here all night. I’ve waited long enough as it is.”

“Don’t push bones into my cell and maybe we could have played your weird games sooner. Just knock next time!” Harrow knocking on Gideon’s door while Gideon was touching herself and thinking about Harrow absolutely would not have been better than what Harrow chose to do instead, but it was at least a little less invasive.

“Don’t make me ask again, Nav.”

“You didn’t ask the first time,” Gideon said, and then she did exactly as she was told. 

The ground was hard, and she carefully examined the packed dirt on either side of her head, suddenly recalling the skeleton that caressed her cheek. There were an uncomfortable number of bone fragments strewn about this cave, the culmination of weeks of battle. Harrow no longer needed to bring additional bone to this place at all, it had everything she needed to test their limits.

Not that that’s what they were doing today apparently.

Gideon carefully set her head back against the ground, looked up at Harrow.

“Close your eyes,” Harrow reminded her, looking down the long painted line of her nose at Gideon. Her eyes seemed bright, wide awake and ready. It wasn’t a comforting look on the Reverend Daughter’s face. Not when you were lying on the ground and about to close your eyes anyway.

Against her better judgement and the furious screaming of her brain, Gideon shut her eyes.

She heard the swish of fabric as Harrow moved closer.

“Lay your sword across your chest,” Harrow instructed.

“Uh,” Gideon said, confused. She pulled her right hand up onto her chest so that the hilt of her sword pressed into her ribs.

“No,” Harrow said, “Not like that. Here, let me.”

“I’m opening my eyes,” Gideon announced and opened them to see Harrow leaning down and carefully lifting the tip of Gideon’s sword from the ground with a cloth wrapped hand. She pulled the sword up until it was resting parallel, in line over Gideon’s body. Gideon adjusted her grip to accommodate.

“So the purpose here is to make it so I can’t stand without stabbing my own legs,” Gideon guessed.

“No. Shut up and put your other hand on the hilt.”

Gideon complied with Harrow’s order and Harrow surveyed the tableau she’d created, chewing on her lip as she judged it.

She reached down and pulled one of Gideon’s elbows, and then adjusted Gideon’s cloak. Gideon watched all this quietly. She tried to comfort herself with the thought that Harrow probably wouldn’t go through all of this trouble just to beat the shit out of Gideon with a pile of bones. 

It wasn’t much comfort. That was exactly the sort of thing Harrowhark might do.

Harrow stopped pulling and poking at Gideon and stood back to get a complete look down at her work. Gideon, for her part, lay quietly with her sword set over her chest, hands holding the hilt -- like Gideon was dead and being laid to rest, which was... yeah, creepy, and hopefully not foreshadowing for the near future. But then again, at least now Gideon knew that if she died, Harrow would probably let her corpse keep the sword.

“Close your eyes again and don’t you dare move,” Harrow instructed, “or I’ll put you down in the oss for a month.”

The threat was unnecessary. Gideon was in this now. She wanted to see where it was going. She didn’t move. Her ankle itched, and her neck tickled like something might be crawling on it. She tried her hardest to ignore it, to stay as still as possible, play dead. 

Harrowhark always came up with the weirdest games. 

Harrow kneeled beside Gideon, carefully touched Gideon’s hands. Gideon startled, but stilled herself again immediately, didn’t move a muscle as Harrow traced her fingers lightly over Gideon’s skin. Gideon’s entire body tingled with it. 

Gideon swallowed twice and hoped that that, at least, was allowed. Her face felt hot and red and the air seemed especially thin, like she might pass out at any moment. 

Eventually, Harrow leaned down and kissed Gideon’s lips, careful and sweet, like none of the other kisses that had come before. Gideon didn’t move. She held it together even when Harrow pressed her tongue softly between Gideon’s lips and Gideon lit up, crackles and sparks, and her entire body begging to move, to reach for Harrow, to kiss her back -- even then Gideon did not give in.

Eventually Harrow sighed and leaned back away from Gideon. When nothing more happened, Gideon cracked open one eye to peek at Harrow. 

Harrow was just kneeling next to Gideon, doing nothing but watching her, a stony face beneath a mask of paint and her hood pulled up to cover her hair. Harrow didn’t yell at her for peeking, so Gideon opened both eyes. That didn’t get a reaction from Harrow either.

“I don’t get it,” Gideon said, breaking the silence. “I mean, that was actually” -- she wanted to say ‘nice’ but didn’t think Harrow would take that well, and she was fairly certain that if she knew what was going on, ‘nice’ would be the last word for it -- “kinda... weird.”

“You don’t have to get it,” Harrow said, but there were no barbs in her voice, no mean edges. 

“Was that the end you meant before?” Gideon asked. “Getting me to go along with re-enacting my own funeral? Imagining me dead?”

“I’m very talented at imagining your death in vivid detail without making you re-enact it in front of me. When it’s the end, you’ll know.”

Good. 

Good?

Gideon let her sword clatter to the floor and folded her hands behind her head so that she could look at Harrow a little easier. “Is this like -- a weird sex with dead people thing then? Do you kiss the corpses in catacombs when you think nobody’s looking?”

“Don’t transfer your deviant thoughts onto me,” Harrow warned. “I don’t want to know about the sickening things happening in that abnormally small head.”

Gideon rolled her eyes. Her head only looked small because her biceps were so big. It was a fair trade.

“That’s rich, coming from the High Bone Freak of the Ninth House” Gideon said, couldn’t help herself. 

Harrow flexed her fingers, pressed at her palms. She squeezed her eyes shut for a long moment and Gideon guessed she was probably imagining Gideon’s death in vivid detail again, which meant it was time for Gideon to get back on her feet with her sword in hand.

The thing was -- the banter and prodding hadn’t eased the itch under Gideon’s skin. Letting Harrow drop kisses onto her frozen lips was maybe nice (and weird and raised a bunch of new questions for Gideon’s brain to yell at her about) but it wasn’t the same as getting themselves all worked up during a battle and then devouring each others’ mouths in desperate union after. Gideon’s entire body felt like a ball of prickly needs and wants and almost hads. And if she pushed Harrow just far enough --

Harrow was on her feet as soon as Gideon started to move. By the time Gideon had one foot on the ground to push herself up, Harrow’s eyes were narrowing and her fingers spread and strained and Gideon heard the ground start to shift on either side of her. 

Gideon looked up at Harrow, at Harrow’s mouth turned up in an ugly little smirk. Gideon grinned. Harrow growled, actually growled like the feral death goblin she was. Gideon’s grin stretched wider and she winked.

Harrow’s mouth pinched. Gideon was fairly certain the Reverend Daughter’s face flushed beneath her paint, and she felt a strange pride swell in her chest.

By the time Gideon was upright, there were more than twenty skeletons rushing toward her and Harrow was bleeding from several places.

Gideon shouted and threw herself at the rushing crowd of bone. Hacking and chopping at limbs, knocking out ribs, decapitating skulls, and the entire time thinking about what would inevitably come next, of Harrow’s mean little fingers pulling at Gideon’s clothes, pressing into her arms, maybe grabbing at her neck or her face, of the taste of paint and blood on her tongue, of Harrow’s mouth on hers, wet and desperate and biting.

She plowed through the army in record time, breaking bones, kicking piles of osseous matter out of the way, shattering one construct after another until nothing was left but a cloud of choking dust and Harrowhark pushing through it, those fingers grabbing for Gideon, her mouth wet and desperate and biting.

Gideon stopped thinking about how this all might end.

**

Harrow’s armies grew and Gideon tore them to the ground. She collapsed into bed at the end of the day exhausted and buzzing all at once. Gideon ran gauntlets of bone the likes of which Harrow hadn’t created for Gideon since they were children and she came out on the other end bruised and sore, triumphant and alight. Harrow erected strange moving conglomerations that would have haunted Gideon for weeks if their memory wasn’t eclipsed by the memory of what came afterward.

And the kissing -- Nothing that Gideon read, no photographic images or detailed illustrations, could really convey what it was like to have Harrow’s mouth kissing hers, to feel that first touch of Harrow’s tongue, the sharp press of teeth to her lips, to her chin. They kissed until there wasn’t a trace of paint left on Harrow’s mouth, nothing but her skin, bitten and red. They kissed until Gideon felt like her entire body was swimming in it, until she wanted to hold Harrow to her, disappear within her. 

There were unspoken rules and Gideon was careful to follow them. Harrow initiated everything, led their lips and their limbs. Gideon fisted her hands in the folds of Harrow’s robe where they were safe, where they could not roam, could not try to reach or want for more. What Harrow wanted, what she took from Gideon and what she gave; it was enough. It was enough to wait for Harrow to kiss her mouth open, delicious enough to feel Harrow sucking at her tongue. It was enough to feel Harrow’s hands on her arms and her chest and her neck, pulling Gideon closer, pushing her away when Harrow was done. Harrow’s fingers pressed against the bruises left by bone and Gideon moaned against Harrow’s lips, felt Harrow surge closer in response. 

It was enough.

**

It was enough all the way up until Gideon returned to her cell one afternoon following a training session with Aiglamene to find Harrow’s skeleton waiting. It leaned casually against the wall of the corridor, hip cocked, one knee bent. It had its hand raised toward its face as though examining invisible fingernails. It stood upright as Gideon approached, at attention, ready.

“Hold on,” Gideon said. The skeleton couldn’t actually hear, but you live on the Ninth long enough, you find yourself talking to them anyway.

It ignored Gideon’s request and tried to follow her into her cell. She pushed it back, hand firm against its rib cage, and shut the door in its face. Her sword was already in her hand, she was ready, but she was also tired and sticky with sweat and she swung her sword and then tossed it on the bed.

While sparring, Aiglamene commented on the increase in Gideon’s stamina, complimented Gideon’s dedication to her training, and Gideon’s head buzzed with the jokes and retorts she could make at the Reverend Daughter’s expense.

_Our Lady has been riding me hard... and putting me away wet_. Gideon could hear Harrow’s voice now, haughty and nasal, “That isn’t what that means, you assclown, you pervert.” 

_The Reverend Daughter enrolled me in her special reward system_. 

_Turns out training hard makes your Bone Queen want to bone me._

Gideon was smart enough to take the complement without offering any of these quality retorts. 

She splashed her face with water, exhaled into the curl of her hand to test her breath. She contemplated changing her clothes, but there didn’t seem much point. She was going back out just to get all sweaty again anyway. 

Satisfied, Gideon retrieved her sword and opened the door of her cell. The skeleton was still standing where she left it. It anxiously tapped its foot against the chilly tiles of the floor.

Gideon imagined Harrow standing out in the thin air on their battlefield, pulling this skeleton’s strings, her nose bleeding impatiently.

“All right, all right,” Gideon said. “Take me to your leader.” 

She had to push past the skeleton to get out of her room, and that seemed to knock it into action. Everything proceeded just as it always did until the skeleton turned left toward the dreaded white doors of Drearburh instead of right toward Harrow and Gideon’s battle cave. 

Gideon paused, concerned that she was following someone else’s construct again, but the skeleton didn’t keep walking away from her. It stopped when she stopped and waited. It was definitely Harrow’s creation; it had too much character to have been hobbled together by anyone else. Gideon started walking again and the construct resumed leading. It led her through the doors and Gideon managed to keep her screams inside her head. It led her past the halls of praying penitents. Finally, the skeleton stopped outside the doors to the Reverend Daughter’s personal cells. 

“Are you stupid?” Gideon asked, a dumb question considering that the skeleton’s head was, in fact, completely empty. “Someone got your wires crossed?”

Gideon knew better than to be caught here. She hadn’t been to this section of Drearburh since she was eleven and she wasn’t keen to stick around now. 

“I’ll find my own way, thanks,” she told the pile of useless bone and started back the way they’d come. The skeleton ran after her, grabbed her arm, and when Gideon turned back to knock it away, Harrow was there, her head glaring at Gideon from around the edge of her door.

“Where are you going?” Harrow hissed. “Get in here.”

Gideon groaned and trudged back toward Harrow, not at all pleased with this change to their usual plan.

“Faster, Griddle. Stop dragging your feet.”

Harrow slammed the door as soon as Gideon and the skeleton were both inside. She pressed her back to the door, and turned toward Gideon, her hands splayed and already tense. 

“What -- “ Gideon started, but she was cut off by Harrow’s skeleton, which kicked the back of Gideon’s knee and grabbed her arms when she started to fall. 

Gideon turned to fend it off and found that Harrow had raised three more. It wasn’t very many compared to the fights on their battlefield, but this was a small space, and Harrow put all her focus into these constructs. They were _good_. Gideon leaned forward in an attempt to wrench herself free from her escort’s bony grip. It held on tight, even when Gideon lifted its feet off the ground. One of the others swung a skeletal fist toward Gideon’s face and she ducked just in time to avoid the blow. It hit the first skeleton in the jaw, removed its head entirely and it fell away from Gideon’s back. The body scrambled after its head, reached down and put it back on its neck and then charged at Gideon, jaw down in a silent scream. 

Fuck, these skeletons were nasty. Gideon tore through another. It started pulling itself together while she was still working on taking it apart! Harrow had never come at her with something so determined and difficult to bring down.

Harrow stayed by the door, watching Gideon with intense eyes, her chest swelling and her ears bleeding down the sides of her pointy face. 

Gideon took one look at Harrow’s enhanced agitation, at this new setting, at the fervor with which these skeletons fought and the heat in Harrow’s eyes. This was definitely something new, something more than it was before, and Gideon swung faster, hit harder, sprayed Harrow’s room with chips and pieces of splintered bone. 

The skeletons pulled themselves back together three times, then a fourth, until finally the bones shattered and didn’t get back up. Gideon could not remember the last time she fought so fiercely, pushed herself so hard, and she shouted in triumph as the last skeleton fell to the ground in pieces. 

And then Harrow was there. 

She grabbed for Gideon and tripped over the discarded bones, falling gracelessly into Gideon instead. Gideon went down with her, folding to her knees and thanking the Emperor-God-whoever that she landed on a patch of soft carpet instead of bits of hard bone matter. 

Harrow wasted no time trying to recover from the awkward fall. Her mouth was on Gideon’s mouth, lips demanding to be kissed even as Gideon tried desperately to catch her breath, sucking in big gulps of air before Harrow’s lips covered hers again. It started out like it always did, kisses that made Gideon’s veins throb and her insides melt, kisses that flared low in Gideon’s belly, kisses that Gideon would be thinking about the rest of the night and into the morning.

In the rush of the moment Gideon forgot to twist her hands safely into Harrow’s robe and her fingers found themselves low on Harrow’s hips. Harrow made a delicious little wanting noise into Gideon’s mouth, and Gideon savored it, swallowed it, held Harrow tighter. Harrow bit at Gideon and then pushed Gideon away, hard enough that Gideon had to let go of Harrow to catch herself, to prop herself back up again. Harrow grabbed Gideon’s hand, pulled her back upright. 

Harrow stilled then, Gideon’s hand held tight in hers. She squeezed her eyes shut and raked her teeth over her lower lip paint.

Gideon was in trouble. She swallowed the feeling and waited for Harrow to gather herself. 

Except Harrow didn’t gather herself so much as she threw them both head first over the edge of the tallest tier. 

She pulled Gideon’s hand forward and then pressed it to her stomach. Gideon’s palm spread wide across Harrow’s lower belly, over thin layers of black fabric, and then Harrow began to slide Gideon’s hand slowly down, down, Harrow’s body growing warmer beneath Gideon’s skin. 

Gideon couldn’t help herself; she moaned, long and low, as she pressed her palm against Harrow’s sex, felt Harrow grind down against her in return. Harrow’s eyes were still closed and her paint smeared mouth fell open, just slightly. It was quite possibly the most beautiful thing that Gideon had ever seen. Harrow was amazingly into this, desperate and beyond caring now, and her fingers scrambled to unbutton her trousers. 

Gideon did not need more of an invitation than that. 

As soon as Harrow was out of the way, Gideon slid her hand in, down the tight space between the fabric of Harrow’s trousers and her skin until her fingers touched coarse curls and then dipped even lower. Gideon’s mouth watered, and her thighs shook, and she always knew that if she ever got this far with anyone it would blow her damn mind, but this -- _this_ \-- She’d spent so much time thinking about where this was all headed. She never guessed, not in ten thousand years, that Harrow would just take her hand and -- 

Harrow was gasping and shaking on Gideon’s fingers. Her hand reached out to grab at Gideon, to close the distance between their bodies, to press wet kisses to Gideon’s mouth. Gideon tasted Harrow’s gasps, felt each shudder reverberate through her own body, and when Harrow found release, Gideon caught the Reverend Daughter in her arms and lowered them both carefully to the floor.

She pulled Harrow in close, pressed Harrow’s face carefully to her chest. Gideon let Harrow ride out those last echoes as she held a hand to Harrow’s back to ground her. She pressed her lips to Harrow’s forehead, the kiss a soft but firm pressure against Harrow’s frontal bone.

Harrow stilled beneath Gideon’s lips. Her breathing slowed and as it did, Harrow grew stiff in Gideon’s arms, tight and tense, her entire frame frozen and strained.

“What are you doing?” Harrow asked, her voice quiet and shaking.

“Nothing,” Gideon said, so close that her mouth brushed Harrow’s skin as she spoke. “Just holding you.”

Harrow made a terrible pained noise and began to flail as soon as the words were past of Gideon’s lips, pushing and shoving, kicking at Gideon until Gideon released Harrow and tried to roll away from the onslaught. She turned onto a bunch of bone chips that bit into her skin and drew blood on her arms, but when she tried to roll back, Harrow’s hands begin hitting her in earnest. 

Gideon held her hands up to show Harrow that she had no intention of touching her again. “Fuck, Harrow. What the hell!”

“Stay away from me, you worthless imbecile,” Harrow spit. She sprang to her feet so that she was towering over Gideon, the taller of the two for the first time in her life, and she sneered down with such absolute disdain that Gideon felt it like a punch to the gut, felt it like Harrow had just hauled off and kicked her in the stomach. “Don’t ever touch me like that again.”

“Like what?!” Gideon asked, honestly amazed by Harrow’s outburst. “Did I hurt you somehow?”

“Don’t touch me at all. Don’t touch me like _that_.” Harrow’s face twisted with hate on the last word.

“Harrow, I -- “

“How many times have I told you, _Griddle_?” Harrow asked. Her voice had gone cold, like Gideon was an intruder, like she was dirt under Harrow’s boot, bone crunching to dust on the bottom of her shoe. “This isn’t about you. It was never about you.”

Gideon couldn’t have this conversation like this, lying on the floor with Harrow over her, Harrow’s trousers unbuttoned and unzipped, hanging low on her hips. Gideon got to her feet, made sure to stand back away from Harrow. 

“We’re the only two people here! You just -- ” She wanted to pick up her sword, but wasn’t sure how Harrow would react. 

Harrow scoffed at Gideon and looked away. She stared at the wall for a long time before she turned back to consider Gideon, her dark eyes ice cold stones.

“I know what we just did. I’m telling you to consider it your service to the Ninth and never speak of it again.” Harrow’s fingers closed her clothes as she spoke, adjusted her robe. 

“My service -- you’re fucking joking,” Gideon laughed, aghast. She could feel the heat rushing up her body, flooding her face. 

“Consider it your service to the Ninth and never speak of it again, Nav,” Harrow repeated, as though it was a totally reasonable thing to say, not at all offensive, not the most heinous words that had ever crossed her lips!

Something broke in Gideon then, some delusional deep-seated belief that this might be leading to something good. Harrow said it all along. Gideon Nav was _beholden_ to the Ninth. Harrowhark was using Gideon to get what she wanted, because in this strange world, Gideon owed it to her. Of course Harrow was ready to discard it all, discard Gideon, at the slightest inconvenience. Of course she didn’t think for a moment, not a single second, about what Gideon might want or need or feel. Gideon was nothing but a means to Harrow’s own perverse ends, whatever those might be. It sure as hell wasn’t clear to Gideon. 

She wiped her hand across her face and her fingers smelled of Harrow. Gideon really wished that was not something she knew now, not something she would carry with her, that immediately seared itself into her memory. She shook her head in an attempt to clear it, reached down to grab her sword. 

“This shouldn’t be _news_,” Harrow continued, her face still twisted up, mocking. She looked like she was truly enjoying this now, like she loved cutting Gideon down, chopping her off at the knees. 

That wasn’t news either. 

“Oh, you are such a dick!” Gideon said. “You’re a heinous psychopath! I’ve hated you in every way there is to hate a person for over a decade now. I didn’t think there was any way to hate you that I hadn’t already tried, but turns out there is! I’m impressed, Harrow. You’re really fucking outdoing yourself with this one!” 

“That’s it then,” Harrow said, somehow managing to sound completely indifferent to Gideon’s outburst. She was examining her stupid bony fingers. Why were necromancers so obsessed with their hideous spider hands? “You see, Griddle? I told you you’d know when this ended, didn’t I?”

“Yeah,” Gideon agreed. “You did.”

She had nothing to say to that, so she did the only thing that she could do -- the only thing that wouldn’t end in death or severe injury to the Reverend Daughter, in Crux bashing Gideon’s head in with his club -- She took a deep breath. She bit her tongue to control it, to keep whatever other stupid words were threatening to bubble up from her throat inside, and she tasted blood, and it reminded her of Harrow’s kiss. 

Gideon smiled, cold and wide, awake for the first time in weeks, and she hoped to hell there was blood on her teeth. 

**

There was nothing truly new on the Ninth, not even the feeling of betrayal and bitter disappointment that festered in a heart and churned through a stomach. It was the specialty of the House, served piping hot and stinking every single time. Gideon had eaten her fill over the years. She wasn’t willing to choke down any more. 

She was done lying around and waiting. She was done nursing her bruises, those bits inside that Harrow managed to break. 

Instead she threw herself into a renewed frenzy of preparation. Gideon Nav had tried to escape from the Ninth eighty-six times, starting when she was four years old. Many of these attempts included simply asking (then begging) to be allowed to leave, but there were physical attempts as well, and those required preparation, they required Harrow’s favorite pastime -- _research_. 

It was simple, really. Gideon just had to figure out a way to invisibly infiltrate the shuttle standing-order system, research and steal the necessary forms, forge a signature, swipe a key from the ring hanging in Crux’s quarters. She had to become a shadow, a shade of the Ninth, silent and listening, documenting everything until she knew all that she needed to know, until everything was in order, until the time was right. 

It sounded very serious, extremely dangerous, but this was the Ninth, not the orderly Second and not the well-equipped Third. The old priest who ran the standing order-system was deaf and partially blind. Gideon could stand right behind the old man and he’d never know she was there. Even better, if she got the voice just right, he thought she was Aiglamene come to place orders on official business. She’d done this so many times before that it was easy, a walk in the leek fields. 

The forms were kept in the office of Harrow’s aunts. Guess what! Also blind! Very convenient. Forging Harrow’s signature would be more difficult, but Gideon had a lot of flimsy, a lot of blood, and a whole lot of time.

It was the best and only revenge. Call a shuttle, forge a signature, steel the key to her security cuff, and then never ever _ever_ look back. 

**

The next time Harrow called Gideon to the battlefield -- and she did call Gideon again, only a few weeks after their meeting in Harrow’s room -- Gideon went with hard eyes and the fading bruises on her heart, with sword sharp and ready. She took apart fifty skeletons in record time, fast, efficient, deadlier than ever. 

Afterward Harrow visibly burned, chest heaving in time with Gideon’s, face a sweat-soaked bloody mess. Harrow’s tongue flicked out, slick and oily like a snake, and she pressed it to the corner of her mouth, wetting the dry paint on her lips, gathering a drop of blood that had slid down from her nose. 

There was nothing good to be had here, not a sliver, not a crumb. There was no desire in Gideon’s chest, no burning in her gut. She looked at Harrow and she saw the Reverend Daughter for the unhinged leaking bone bitch that she was, the pathetic and powerless leader of the House of the Dead, Nearly Dead, and One Might As Well Be Dead.

When Harrow started toward Gideon, Gideon raised her sword, pointed it at the Reverend Daughter’s breast and didn’t waver.

“Griddle,” Harrow admonished, her mouth turned up on one end. “Put that away. You look ridiculous standing there pretending you can take me down.”

“I’m done, Nonagesimus,” Gideon said, her voice low and blessedly firm. Harrow paused and her forehead creased. Her thumbs pressed against the tips of her fingers, pressing out an agitated rhythm.

“You still aren’t listening. I say when we’re done,” Harrow said. She took another step toward Gideon, a step toward the point of Gideon’s blade. 

Harrow was aiming for menacing, but her performance fell flat. Gideon rolled her eyes.

“Yeah,” Gideon agreed. “And you said it pretty loud and clear.” Harrow’s face twisted a little. “Don’t pull that face. You look like a dying fish.”

“Nav -- “ Harrow started, her voice louder now.

Gideon cut her off. “Anyway, I’m done with you. Really, Harrow. This shouldn’t be _news_.”

Gideon turned her back to Harrowhark Nonagesimus and walked away. She held up a fist, slowly unfolding her middle finger as her heavy boots kicked up a cloud of bone dust. Gideon hoped Harrow choked on it. There wasn’t much air out here on the edge, a little dust in the lungs could really muck things up.

Oh well.

Fuck the Ninth and fuck its Lady.

Two more months before the shuttle arrived and Gideon Nav would be gone for good. She was never looking back.


End file.
